The DC VOICE Ostrich

Who am I?

The DC VOICE Ostrich, a member of DC VOICE, is dedicated to challenging the community to get their heads out of the sand. The success of D.C. Public Schools depends on community involvement in the reform process. Everyone from the community should have a voice in that reform. DC Voice and the DC Voice Ostrich are committed to inform and mobilize the public to hold both the schools and the community accountable for providing high quality teaching and learning for all.

Earlier this week, President
Obama’s State of the Union address focused heavily on outlining America’s
future; crucial to this outline was investing in equality of opportunity for
America’s young children. Quality childhood education programs are cost-effective
and a proactive attempt at curtailing educational inequality head-on, according
to many human capital experts, such as Nobel Laureate Dr. James Heckman.

Much research suggests that
low-income children come to school already systematically disadvantaged than
their peers that are higher-income. Often, low-income children are exposed to
significantly fewer words than children with higher-income parents. This is
nothing to say about the quality of low-income parents, this is however to
point to the fact that there may be some inherent and unseen (but vocal)
disadvantages working against poorer children when they come to school.

These cyclical “poverty-traps” negatively
affect low-income performance, compared to their higher-income peers in third grade (many child-education experts identify third grade as crucial
for predicting future educational performance).However, these effects are often curtailed when low to
moderate-income children start school, if children are enrolled in high-quality
early childhood programs such as JUMP Start. Less economically advantaged students
can perform equally well, there may just need to be consistent high-quality efforts to maintain the benefits.

President Obama, at the State of
the Union, affirmed the federal government’s commitment to help states expand
access to high-quality early education. In DC, Mayor Gray is already outspoken
proponent of universal early childhood access; there have been efforts to
increase high quality early childhood centers in low-income neighborhoods. One
such example is the Educare opening in Ward 7, which seeks to service children
and infants.

DC VOICE is committed to seeing
that early childhood initiatives are promoted within the District of Columbia,
to benefit our entire community. One of our recent projects, Ready Kids, was
conducted assessed how prepared young children are when they enter schools. Using
the District’s five readiness indicators (Social, Cognitive, Physical Health,
Emotional Appropriateness and Language Development), we conducted surveys of kindergarten
teachers, counselors and nurses.

Participants’ responses were
collected and the aggregate data was recently publicly released as part of our
Ready Kids project.

The Ready Kids Projectlooks at the
readiness of our young children for kindergarten through interviews with
kindergarten teachers and school counselors across the city. This Ready Kids
Project was funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Howard University produced
this White Paper based on the project
findings. Click here to read the full report

DC VOICE conducted TheTesting Project during the Summer of 2012 to assess the impact of standardized
testing on high school students and recent graduates, including how it affects
student attitudes towards school and learning. Dr. Dennis Campbell of
American University and a member of DC VOICE’s Program Strategy Committee, produced
this White Paper based on the project findings. To read the full report: click here

President
Obama made a few key references to the role of education in America in his inaugural speech.

President
Obama’s rousing speech hit on key themes of using education to revitalize the
workforce to advance both the American economy and society. His references to science
and the workforce also hit on key platform themes such as immigration, the
Common Core standards, and investments in education as method to alleviate
poverty in America. Equality of opportunity, particularly through education was
a central theme as spoke of his ideal that a little girl born in the “ bleakest
of poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else,
because she is an American, she is free, and she is equal”.

President Obama
used education an allegory for social mobility, underlined with equality of
opportunity. He addressed the American mission to “harness new ideas and
technology to remake our government, revamp our tax code, reform our schools,
and empower our citizens with the skills they need to work harder, learn more,
and reach higher.” It will be very interesting to see how education in the
District of Columbia and across the nation changes and hopefully improves to
meet the needs of citizens.